Harvard Refuses To Act, Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster Strikes Again, & Ukraine Funding

Welcome! A TV announcer for the Buffalo Sabres took a puck to the face and refused to leave the game.

NEW: Is Nikki Haley pulling out of the next GOP debate? – Axios

MLB: Shohei Ohtani signed a $700 million contract but is only making $2 million per year. – Yahoo

EV: Ford cuts planned 2024 production of electric F-150 Lightning in half – CNBC

HEADLINE: New Hampshire Governor To Endorse Haley for President – WFB

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Harvard

Harvard’s highest governing body voted to “unanimously stand in support” of disgraced university president Claudine Gay following her antisemitic congressional testimony.

“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”

If Gay’s congressional testimony wasn’t bad enough, Harvard’s board of directors was also forced to look past recently unearthed instances of blatant plagiarism that Gay has committed since 1993.

In four papers published between 1993 and 2017, including her doctoral dissertation, Gay, a political scientist, paraphrased or quoted nearly 20 authors—including two of her colleagues in Harvard University’s department of government—without proper attribution, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis. Other examples of possible plagiarism, all from Gay’s dissertation, were publicized Sunday by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo and Karlstack’s Chris Brunet.

The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that “it’s not enough to change a few words here and there.”

MUST READ: “A White Male Would Probably Already Be Gone” – City Journal

Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster Strike Again

Ever since Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan which handed the country back over to Islamic terrorists and resulted in the death of 13 American soldiers, the Taliban has launched multiple attacks in the region based out of Kabul. Yesterday, a suicide attack was launched against neighboring Pakistan that resulted in the deaths of 23 Pakistani soldiers. This is from The Washington Post:

Many of the attacks appear to originate from Afghanistan, though the Afghan Taliban denies it is providing a haven for the Pakistani militants. In the first half of 2023, militant attacks in Pakistan soared by 80 percent, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, with the Pakistani Taliban assumed to be involved in most cases.

Inflation

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge ticked up 0.1% from October to November. While the numbers remain in line with expectations, core inflation – which excludes volatile items like food and energy – jumped to 4%, exactly double the Federal Reserve’s target.

What went upCNBC’s compilation of year-over-year increases reports that insurance has spiked 19.2%, sporting event tickets jumped by 16.4%, and motor vehicle repairs are up 12.7%.

A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels strikes a Norwegian-flagged tanker in the Red Sea

A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels slammed into a Norwegian-flagged tanker in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen near a key maritime chokepoint, the rebels and authorities said Tuesday.

The assault on the oil and chemical tanker Strinda expands a campaign by the Iranian-backed rebels targeting ships close to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into apparently now striking those that have no clear ties to Israel. That potentially imperils cargo and energy shipments coming through the Suez Canal and further widens the international impact of the Israel-Hamas war now raging in the Gaza Strip.

Full story at The Associated Press.

POLL: Donald Trump’s Commanding Lead

Donald Trump maintains his dominant position in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest, drawing the support of more than half of the party’s voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Monday.

The poll found that 61% of self-identified Republicans said they would vote for the former U.S. president in the state-by-state nominating contest to pick a challenger to Democratic President Joe Biden.

Full story at Reuters.

WSJ: House Speaker Johnson Insists Ukraine Aid Package Include U.S. Border Measures

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said Monday he was sticking to his position that any package delivering aid to Kyiv would have to include strict new border-security measures, underscoring the stalemate gripping Congress on the eve of a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

The new House speaker is scheduled to meet with Zelensky on Tuesday as part of a push by Ukraine’s president for continued military aid. Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over the national-security package for months, as a rising isolationist and America First wing of the Republican Party gains traction and as public support for a war now almost two years old starts to wane.

“My message to him will be the same as it’s been to the president,” he told The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. “This is an important battle for all the reasons we know, but I don’t think it’s a radical proposition to say that if we’re going to have a national-security supplemental package, it ought to begin with our own national security.”

Full story at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

WSJ: Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Made Israel Stronger

Walker Russell Meed spent a week in Israel traveling to combat zones in the north and the south and spoke with multiple Israeli officials. Here’s his takeaway:

Israeli military experts, including critics of the government, think the war is going reasonably well. Casualties are significant, and there is hard slogging ahead, but Israel is on course to inflict defeat on the deranged and misguided Hamas movement. It also is headed toward deeper integration into the Middle East. Arab leaders, who are moving the Arab and Islamic worlds into a brighter future than the fanatics can imagine, appreciate as never before the value of a strong Israel to their own security and prosperity.

Full story at The Wall Street Journal (paywall).

China uranium grab poses threat to western energy supply, warns Yellow Cake

China is making an aggressive push to tie up global uranium supply amid a worldwide rush to secure nuclear fuel, warned the boss of Yellow Cake, a London-listed investment vehicle for the radioactive commodity.

André Liebenberg, chief executive of the Aim-traded company, said the west was lagging behind in securing uranium after prices hit a 15-year high and as Chinese firms purchase supplies on the open market, sign long-term contracts and buy up mines.

Full story at the Financial Times (paywall)

Trending news:

  • Suspended groups at Columbia University continue to hold anti-Israel campus events – JI
  • US alarmed as China hacks critical systems – Fox News
  • Poll: A fifth of Black voters want ‘someone else’ instead of Trump or Biden – Politico
  • The most expensive bottle of win sold for $558,000 – Fox News
  • WATCH: Hamas Trained for Oct. 7 Attack in Plain Sight – WSJ (paywall)
  • Man charged with threatening to kill GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – Washington Post (paywall)
  • Inside the World Excel Championships (Yes, You Read That Right) – WSJ (paywall)
  • No One Is Investing in Adaptation, the ‘Poor Cousin’ of the Climate Debate – Bloomberg (paywall)